26 Vortnights 23: Vegan

For this prompt, I'm using a concept I've been interested in for a while. Namely, that of a vegan or vegetarian pred that eats plant people. While this concept doesn't really fit the more common moral reasons for being vegan IRL, I feel that it can be justified by having the pred either be vegan because they think it's healthier, or because they actually have some sort of medical reason to avoid meat, such as an allergy to animal protein. In this case, an orc falling into the latter category has eaten a dryad in an urban fantasy setting. (Which happens to be the same world my werewolf girl Roxanne comes from.)

In this setting, all orcs are functional hermaphrodites at least theoretically capable of swallowing large prey whole. Dryads, on the other hand, are females of the sexually dimorphic treefolk species - the males are treants. Most predatory races would have little interest in the woody flesh of treefolk, but orcs have a very broad definition of what is edible. They are capable of safely consuming and digesting almost any sort of organic matter that isn't too terribly poisonous or decayed, and their idea of what is palatable is much broader than most other races. However, even most orcs would shy away from the sort of fare favored by treefolk. While treefolk get much of their energy from sunlight, they also require some nutrients from food. As plants, their digestive tract is very poorly developed, however, and all their food has to be heavily fermented (read: decayed) for them to be able to absorb the nutrients properly. Compost is the primary staple food for most dryads and treants.